Wednesday, February 07, 2018

This is just bluster. First, the offers have been in the press. Second, as MLB gets complaints by the Players’ Association it needs the ability to verify whether the claims are true or not. Third, just like MLBPA and the agents have the right to take their case to the public, so does MLB.

Boras stopped short of using the word “collusion,” but took issue with MLB revealing in its statement of response that “some” nine-figure ($100+ million) offers have been turned down. The 1987 case won ...

[Ketchikan, Alaska] claims a unique baseball diamond. When baseball players of this southern Alaska city schedule games they always take tide conditions into consideration for the park is built on the flats below the city and at high tide the playing ground and lower seats of the grand stand are under water…Long games are often called on account of rising tides.

I imagine they had their own version of the Baltimore chop, hit sharply downward so the ball gets ...

Monday, February 05, 2018

The Mets agreed to a deal with the veteran Frazier on Monday night for two years and $17 million, The Post’s Mike Puma confirmed. Frazier played the end of last season in The Bronx, after the Yankees acquired him in a multi-player trade with the White Sox.

The Yankees and Mets had each expressed interest in Frazier this offseason, with depth needed at the third-base position. The addition of Frazier means the Mets can play Asdrubal Cabrera at second, the position he recently told The ...

It’s relatively simple. The same draft system continues to exist. The worst team picks first, the second worst picks second, etc., with one caveat: any team that fails to win 70 games in back-to-back seasons faces a 10-spot draft penalty.

Have one awful season (like the Giants and Tigers 64-win teams in 2017) and your club reaps the benefits of having the top picks in the draft and the larger draft bonus pool that comes with it. But if a team wins ...

No. 5: Is the union leadership better positioned for the next round of labor-related negotiations?

It’s imperative that this be addressed immediately. Let’s say, for argument’s sake, that Manfred—whose baseball legacy is built on his ability to forge more than two decades of labor peace, mostly in concert with the late union chief Michael Weiner—called Clark this week and said he would be willing to renegotiate parts of the CBA, in return for an extension.

Sen. Jeff Flake rushed to the aid of injured passengers from a garbage truck Wednesday after it collided with an Amtrak train carrying Republican lawmakers to a GOP congressional retreat in West Virginia.

For Flake, R-Ariz., the accident scene near Crozet, Va., brought back memories of last year’s shooting at the GOP congressional baseball team practice in Alexandria, Va., in which House Majority Whip Steve Scalise, R-La., was seriously wounded.

Sunday, February 04, 2018

“Everyone I’ve been around pretty much walks outside, stretches, plays catch, they do their bullpen. Our pitchers in Cleveland had about an hour-and-a-half routine before they even went out and played catch. They were with massage therapists, then they were with trainers, getting all these hands-on things done, then they went to the weight room to see the strength coach for extra stretching, then they went on the bike, then they went outside and stretched.

It’s not just the international signing limits and cap numbers in the last CBA. The amateur slotting system made building through the draft even cheaper. The decision not to push for higher minimum MLB contracts and the continued refusal to push for higher minor league compensation helps make “going young” an even more attractive proposition for teams.

Baseball is no different. International amateurs are not part of the MLBPA — it’s not obligated to advocate for their interests. Indeed, ...

It would mark the first drop in payroll at the beginning of a season since 2009, when salaries dipped 1.3 percent. Since then, they’ve risen on average 5.5 percent a year, exceeding the $4 billion mark on opening day last year. Currently, teams have committed around $3.78 billion – a 7 percent decline from last season. And while the eventual signings of top free agents Yu Darvish, J.D. Martinez, Eric Hosmer and Jake Arrieta will help bring that number closer to the $4 billion mark, the ...

“I know my decision would be to wear the ‘C,’ because I think it’s the right thing to do and I fully support the way the Indians, through this week, have done the decision that they’ve done. That’s what I support.”

“There is a bond that exists between Clubs and its fan base. The integrity of that time-honored relationship is predicated upon the good faith effort of the Club to compete to the best of its ability. The CBA which defines the relationship between Clubs and Players is a good faith effort to create and assure that there is a competitive balance among all Clubs so that the greater good and best ...

UPDATE: As was reported on Thursday, bringing back the bullpen cart has been offered as a possible solution to speeding up the game this season and beyond. Luckily, we wrote up an entire history on the now-extinct Major League mode of transport last summer.

Reportedly Hosmer has a seven-year $120+ million offer on the table, J.D. Martinez a five-year $125 million offer. The CBA doesn’t require teams to pay players what the players “think* they are worth.

On the pitchers side, starters are throwing less innings than ever. We’ve already witnessed an increased market for relievers this off-season. It stands to reason the starter market would be shrinking to balance out pitcher payrolls.

The batting record of George Sisler would indicate that if he would wait out the pitching, Cobb might not have led the sluggers last season.
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Examination of the records shows Sisler hits too freely, thus hits at a lot of bad balls. Where Cobb received sixty-five bases on balls and Speaker seventy, Sisler walked thirty times.
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When Sisler learns to wait and to hit the “cripple” he should hit ...

Baseball America’s Appel scouting report for 2013 (compiled from conversations with teams’ scouts) is even a little more glowing than his 2012 report.

Appel picked up where he left off last year, after he turned down $3.8 million from the Pirates as the eighth overall pick. As a senior, he fine-tuned his stuff and graduated with a degree in management science and engineering. He shows everything scouts look for in a frontline pitcher. He’s 6-foot-5 and 215 pounds with a clean ...

A quicker paced game is a better game. Get batters in the box and pitchers throwing the ball. Enforce the rules already in place. The one new rule I’d like added is a limit to visits to the mound. Make infielder and catcher visits equivalent to coaches and manager visits. Pitchers and catchers can work out strategy and mixing signs before the game and between innings.

The passing over of Whitaker, Grich, and Evans by the Historical Overview Committee is almost certainly due to the lack of support picked up by these candidate in their brief time on the BBWAA ballot, as evidenced by the screening panel’s repeated selections of candidates who lasted the maximum number of years on the writer’s vote. Indeed, for the recent Modern Baseball Era ballot, the Historical Overview Committee not only chose all four newly eligible candidates whose Hall of Fame cases went ...